


Laughter Is Infectious (The Best Medicine Remix)

by moonix



Series: All for the Jokes [3]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Remix Challenge, Andrew never laughs? Fuck that noise, Five Plus One, Found Family, Friendship, Kevin and Neil collectively hate on golf, M/M, Memes, Neil's smart mouth, Slightly drunk Foxes, Team Bonding, puns, silly jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-24 22:22:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14963297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: Five times the Foxes tried to make Andrew laugh, and one time someone succeeded without even trying.





	Laughter Is Infectious (The Best Medicine Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ApprenticedMagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Haven't You Heard? Laughter is Infectious](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10702389) by [ApprenticedMagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApprenticedMagician/pseuds/ApprenticedMagician). 



> Dear ApprenticedMagician, I read your fic about the Foxes trying to make Neil laugh and just knew that I wanted to do a version where they all give it their best shot with Andrew. Since your fic was part of a series, I had to rewrite some scenes to fit the new context, but I tried to emulate the general structure of your fic and I've recycled some of your dialogue and ideas. I hope the end product lives up to its predecessor and that you like it! (I also checked with Leahelisabeth if it was ok to contribute to your wonderful series!)
> 
> I apologise in advance for the terrible puns and the golf hate. :D

1

“Mind if I join you?”

Andrew looked up from where he was making his way through a bowl of popcorn leftover from the Foxes’ movie night. It was Saturday morning, Neil was out on his run, and Matt was trying to give Aaron some space because he had his girlfriend over. It was definitely too early for popcorn.

Andrew shrugged and turned back to the TV. Matt took that as an invitation and detoured to the kitchen for two mugs of coffee before settling on the couch at a safe distance from Andrew. He was watching cartoons in his pyjamas, bedhair sticking up in all directions. He kind of looked like a little kid, though Matt would never say that out loud.

For a while, they watched Spongebob Squarepants in silence and sipped their coffee. Matt was hit with the sudden urge to laugh hysterically. Not too long ago Andrew had offered speedballs to a recovering drug addict; now the two of them were watching cartoons and munching popcorn for breakfast. Matt needed to say something – _anything_ – to pop the cork off the fermenting silence before it burst.

“Hey, Andrew?” he said, clearing his throat. Andrew grunted and stuffed another handful of popcorn in his mouth. “Why are popcorn jokes so bad?”

Andrew didn’t react, but Matt would have been surprised if he had. He let an appropriate amount of time pass before answering his own question: “Because they’re corny!”

He chuckled to himself and made to grab more popcorn, but Andrew silently moved the bowl out of his reach, his eyes never moving from the screen.

“Ouch,” Matt grinned. “You’re a tough corn to pop, Minyard. Incidentally, what’s the difference between popcorn and pea soup? You can pop corn but you can’t pee soup!”

This time, Andrew went so far as to shoot him a brief look of disgust. Matt laughed harder at the sight – Andrew looked like a pissed off cat that someone had tried and failed to brush.

“I have more where those came from,” Matt assured him. “I’ll just keep trying until you crack. In fact, I have an awesome joke about a horse jockey…”

He got distracted by the sound of the door opening and turned around to see Neil toeing out of his running shoes and pulling his earphones out. His greeting was, perhaps, a little over the top, but being alone with Andrew still made him nervous, and he was _always_ happy to see Neil.

“Hey, Matt,” Neil called out, waving to him. He was just about to take a step into the living area, but his feet got tangled in his shoelaces and before Matt could warn him he face-planted straight into the carpet.

“Shit,” Matt muttered. “You okay, buddy?”

“Fine,” Neil groaned, rolling over.

There was a small wheezing sound next to Matt and he glanced over reflexively, catching the barest hint of amusement on Andrew’s face before it was wiped clean again.

“Neil, your boyfriend’s laughing at you,” Matt marvelled.

“Yeah, he does that,” Neil sighed, picking himself up off the ground. “Feed him some proper breakfast, will you? I’m taking a shower.”

“I’ll try. Hey, Neil, did you hear about the popcorn that joined the army?” Matt called after him. “They made him a kernel!”

Something hit the side of his face and he looked down to find a lone piece of popcorn that Andrew had chucked at him.

“Go choke on it,” Andrew muttered, glaring at the TV.

2

Nicky had been trying for years to charm a laugh out of his surly cousin. Aaron wasn’t exactly a cheerful person, but Nicky had had more success with him, especially when he was tipsy. On the drugs Andrew’s alcohol tolerance had been on a level with Wymack’s, but Nicky noticed that he drank a lot less these days when they went out to Eden’s, and he always stopped after a few drinks.

Naturally, the solution to the problem at hand was a drinking game. Nicky was a master both at devising drinking games and telling jokes, so this one was bound to work one way or another. He got the whole team to Eden’s Twilight for Halloween, “for old times’ sake,” and even managed to badger all of them into wearing costumes.

Ironically, Andrew had decided to dress up as the Joker.

“Okay, here’s how it works,” Nicky told them, distributing shots from the trays he and Aaron had fetched at the bar. “I’m going to tell a joke and whoever _doesn’t_ laugh has to drink. Easy, right?”

“Just kill me now,” Aaron groaned, earning himself a jab in the ribs from Nicky’s elbow. He was supposed to be on Nicky’s side here, and besides, Nicky was _hilarious_.

The game started slowly, not a lot of people drinking. Neither Neil nor Andrew laughed openly, but Andrew cut Neil off after three shots of whisky and gave him a soda to gulp each time instead.

“That’s not fair,” Nicky pouted. “He was just getting drunk enough to start laughing.”

“He was also getting drunk enough to start worrying about alcohol poisoning,” Dan said pointedly as Neil swayed a little in his seat.

“You’re just not funny,” Aaron told Nicky grouchily, knocking back another shot.

“Excuse _you_ ,” Nicky huffed, “My golf joke was hysterical. Everyone except you and these two fun-ruiners thought so.”

“And Kevin,” Matt chuckled. “Kevin didn’t get it, because he only cares about Exy.”

“It’s the only sport worth caring about,” Kevin huffed, topping up his glass.

“Sport!” Neil spat, a little too loudly, and slammed his hand clumsily on the table. “As _if_. Golf is for rich old men with artificial hips who can’t get it up anymore. It’s about as much exercise as playing chess! Golf _wishes_ it was a sport. That’s fucking offensive. I’m offended.”

“What he said,” Kevin agreed, holding his hand out to Neil for a high-five that they both missed.

“Maybe you should take a shot yourself every time you fail to make someone laugh, Nicky,” Allison smirked, tracing the rim of her glass with a glossy red fingernail.

“It’ll be him we have to worry about getting alcohol poisoning then,” Aaron scoffed. “Andrew never laughs. He’s immune to humour.”

“That’s not very nice,” Renee piped up. Andrew, as usual, seemed utterly disinterested in the conversation. He was also notably not participating in the drinking game, which kind of defeated the point of it, really.

“’Scuse you, Andrew’s _very_ funny,” Neil contributed. The look of seriousness on his face was utterly endearing and Nicky only just barely resisted the urge to say, “N’awwwww.”

Andrew downed a shot on his own terms, then leaned over to whisper something in Neil’s ear. As if on cue, Neil started giggling hysterically, still clutching his empty soda glass and tilting sideways into Andrew’s space. For the most minute of moments, Andrew’s mouth seemed to twitch upwards.

Slack-jawed, Nicky watched the exchange and glanced around at the others, who were still debating the golf joke.

“Did anyone just see that? Or am I hallucinating?”

He looked back at Andrew, once again stony-faced and staring at the opposite wall, and Neil, who had tucked his head against Andrew’s shoulder and seemed to be in the process of dozing off.

If he didn’t know better, he would have said that Andrew looked… content.

3

Renee secretly liked to call the days where Andrew agreed to join her in the girls’ dorm while she dyed her hair Pamper Andrew days. She never said it out loud, but she always made sure to stock up on his favourite snacks and treats, and lately he’d agreed to let her cut his hair while she was waiting for her dye to set. She had some other ideas of things they could try, but they had time for that and she didn’t want to overwhelm him.

Today Allison came back unexpectedly early as her class had been cancelled, right as Renee was in the middle of buzzing the sides of Andrew’s hair short.

“Hm,” she said as she spotted Andrew sitting cross-legged on the bathroom floor, before turning on her heels and walking out again. Renee thought she might leave them to it, as she and Andrew didn’t exactly have the best track record, but there was only the sound of someone rummaging in the kitchen, the clink of cutlery and the mixer cutting on.

“I’ll join you,” Allison decided upon her return, kicking off her heels and lowering herself gracefully onto the fluffy bath mat with a milkshake in hand. “I helped myself to the last of the strawberries.”

“That’s fine,” Renee said. “We were more in the mood for chocolate, anyway.”

She put down the electric razor and picked up a damp washcloth to wipe some excess hairs off the side of Andrew’s face, careful not to touch him directly. Andrew blinked and held still, the only motion the slow grinding of his jaw as he chewed on his straw.

“I heard a great Knock Knock joke today,” Allison mused, rifling through a bag of nail polish that Renee had laid out earlier. She picked out a shade of red called _Vermillion Vendetta_ for herself and a soft, bruised purple for Renee.

“Oh?” Renee encouraged her. “Do tell.”

Allison waggled her fingers dismissively and started on the first coat of nail polish on her right foot.

“Tell you later. Not in the mood right now while your pet black hole sucks all the fun out of the air.”

“Don’t be mean,” Renee chided. “Hey, Andrew. Knock knock.”

It took him a long moment to respond, but he finally indulged her and said, “Who’s there,” in the flattest voice possible. Renee finished tidying up and chanced a quick glance at her phone to make sure it wasn’t time to wash out the dye yet.

“Suspense,” she said.

Andrew’s patience for playing along seemed exhausted, because he didn’t reply any more. Renee picked up the bottle of purple nail polish and finished an entire coat before she looked up and caught Andrew’s eye. There was something almost like mischief in his gaze, and Renee laughed.

“Oh! Well done. You turned the joke around on me.”

Allison looked confused, then briefly scandalised, then contemplative. She didn’t say anything of what was going through her head, but Renee saw that she paid a little more attention to Andrew. After Renee had washed the dye out of her hair, Allison picked out a bottle of black nail polish from her bag and offered it to him.

“For your black hole aesthetic,” she said stiffly.

Andrew reflexively took the bottle and looked a little surprised at himself, though he quickly smoothed over his expression again. Allison nodded at him, her posture rigid and perfect in the way it always was when she was nervous and tried to compensate for it.

Andrew nodded back minutely and pocketed the bottle.

4

“Oh my god,” Dan said, loudly enough to draw the attention of the other Foxes. They were on a break and everyone was standing around drinking water and complaining about the heat, except for Andrew and Renee, who were running laps and talking, and Kevin who was, of course, talking strategy with Wymack.

Neil was closest to her and leaned over to catch a glimpse of what was on her phone.

“Oh,” he chuckled. “Looks like Andrew.”

“Doesn’t it?!” Dan crowed triumphantly. She waved her phone at the others, who had crept over curiously, showing off the picture of a mean-looking black cat with its paws on the handle of a knife and a box of cigarettes.

“You’ve got to be kitten me,” Nicky joked. “The likeness is… _uncanine_ , you could say.”

“All it’s missing is a pint of ice-cream,” Matt grinned, passing the phone on to Allison. “Dan, remind me to show you my cat meme folder.”

“You’ve shown me your cat meme folder three times in the past month, babe,” Dan replied, patting his arm. It gave her an idea though, and she took her phone back and tapped it against her chin as she thought.

“On second thought, can you show me again?”

They didn’t get around to it until after practice, but by the next day Dan had printed out a stack of pictures and armed herself with a box of thumbtacks and some tape. She started by subtly replacing one of the few photos of Andrew that they had up in the lounge with another knife-wielding cat and carefully stored the rest in her locker for now. It took a few days, but eventually someone noticed the change, and Dan replaced the picture with a different one.

It became a thing. Every day there was a new Andrew cat to be found on the photo wall, complete with captions added by various team members. Dan spied Neil squirrelling away the best ones in his locker, though Andrew never acknowledged them.

One day Dan walked into the lobby to find that someone had replaced _all_ of the photos on the wall with cat memes and pictures.

There were some for every team member, including ones for Wymack and Abby. There was even a big, grouchy looking cat lying on top of an Exy racquet that was clearly meant to be Kevin, and a goofy ginger creature wrestling with a ball that had replaced a picture of Neil. Andrew was lounging on the sofa, looking for all the world like he hadn’t even noticed, but there was a particular bounce to his foot as he scrolled through his phone that immediately made him suspicious.

“Alright,” Dan said, amused. “Well played, Minyard. I hope you kept the original pictures.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Andrew hummed, not even looking up from his phone. Dan caught a glimpse of the screen over his shoulder – he was definitely scrolling through cat posts.

“Practice starts in fifteen,” she reminded him. Then she tapped one of the cats on the wall and added, “Nice self- _purr_ trait, by the way.”

As she walked away, she thought she heard Andrew mutter, “Don’t _puss_ your luck,” under his breath, but she decided not to mention it when the rest of the rabble came rousing in.

5

Andrew marched into David’s office without knocking, as he was wont to do.

Once upon a time he would have greeted David with a smart-ass quip, or immediately started rambling about how much he was _bothered_ by the new guy. But these days Andrew was off his drugs and mostly silent, and Neil wasn’t the new guy anymore but Andrew’s boyfriend instead. What a mind-fuck, honestly.

“Andrew,” David said, giving him a once-over before going back to his paperwork. “Have a seat.”

Andrew remained standing just to be contrary. David sighed and set his things aside before getting up to pour them both a small measure of Scotch. He handed the glass to Andrew, who spun the amber liquid around and around, watching the miniature whirlpool with a look of calm detachment.

“You have any idea how much trouble your-” He hesitated, then changed track to: “Neil has caused me lately?”

“I’ve lost track of the exact figure,” Andrew said casually. David knew he was full of shit, because a memory like Andrew’s did not lose track of exact figures, but he let him have his little game.

“How about I narrow it down for you, smart-ass.” He knocked back his drink and crossed his arms. “Kathy Ferdinand, for one.”

“Oh, Coach. He gave her more views than she knows what to do with.”

“He could try doing that without also causing a scandal with her fans,” David growled.

“I suppose he could,” Andrew shrugged. “What does that have to do with me?”

David sighed, feeling one minor aneurysm away from throwing his hands in the air and just walking away from it all. It was a lie, of course – he’d never walk away from his Foxes.

“She’s asking for a public apology,” he eventually said, flexing his shoulders against the itchiness that liked to settle there whenever people tried to put a leash on his kids. And try they did, time and time again.

But they wouldn’t succeed, not for as long as David was alive and conscious. And Foxes were Foxes for a reason, they didn’t do well at giving ground.

“You might as well ask Kevin to start playing baseball instead of Exy,” Andrew said dryly, and David huffed out a dry laugh.

“Don’t I know it. He’ll do no such thing. No idea what she’s smoking that makes her think he will,” he said. “It was wrong to send him on her show again in the first place, after what happened last time.”

Andrew didn’t reply, which meant he agreed with him.

“I’m taking him off press duty for the time being,” David informed him. “And I’m tasking you with the responsibility to keep him away from any and all microphones and cameras until this has blown over. Got it?”

“Always so funny, Coach,” Andrew said tonelessly, not a hint of humour in his voice.

“I said, got it?” David repeated.

Andrew flicked him one of his sarcastic salutes and got up.

“One more thing,” David said, biting the inside of his cheek. Oh, hell. He’d lost that bet, now he had to pay the price. He knew better than to bet against Abby, and she was never going to let him live it down if he didn’t go through with it, so-

“Nice jersey,” he said. Andrew stared back impassively. “Looks comfy. Like it’s made of boyfriend material.”

Andrew’s eyes briefly betrayed him by flicking down to check the number on his jersey, which was a bold 10, before he turned and left the office.

Well, David thought. He’d tried.

+1

They were sharing cigarettes on the roof of their new house, the skylight they’d climbed out through propped open behind them and a threadbare blanket spread out over the tiles. The sun was just setting, one last pouty lip of reddish light jutting out over the horizon, and King had joined them in the hopes of investigating the pigeons roosting in the eaves.

Neil prodded her away from the nest with his foot and she let out a yowl of complaint before trotting off in a huff.

“Idiot cat,” Andrew said fondly, looking from the horizon to Neil’s smiling face.

“I’m starting to think you have a thing for idiots,” Neil teased. Andrew idly contemplated shoving him off the roof and never looking back. He tapped the ash off his cigarette and caught King by the scruff of her neck before she could sneak past him.

“I must have,” he grumbled. “Considering I married one.”

“What do you call a goalkeeper with a .958 save percentage and two dumb cats?” Neil said, leaning in close until the smoke trails from their mouths mingled between them. Andrew rolled his eyes and Neil answered quickly, cupping his face and cradling it in his hands.

 “ _Babe_ ,” he murmured, voice smoke-rough and low in a way that sent a tingle down Andrew’s spine. “You call him babe.”

“Of course you’d make it about Exy,” Andrew scoffed. “Should I be relieved you didn’t compare me to a racquet?”

“Well, you are sturdy and strong and you smell nice,” Neil grinned.

“Is this your attempt at dirty talk, Josten? Telling me you sniff your racquets?”

“Not the only one who’s called Josten anymore in this household,” Neil reminded him, smoothing his fingers down Andrew’s jaw and rubbing absent-mindedly over a fading hickey nestled in the crook of his collarbone. Somehow, Neil had ended up in his lap. Somehow, Andrew didn’t mind.

It still felt odd, that name. But odd in a way that Neil’s sweaters felt when Andrew pulled them on – not quite his size, not quite as stretched out in some places as his own clothes, but still the most comfortable option out of all of them.

Neil kept stroking his face and playing with his hair, and Andrew held him loosely in his lap and watched as King attempted to find yet another path around them toward the pigeon nest. The impossibility of the situation struck him like a drink fizzing over, and he felt something light and ticklish in his chest that bubbled and grew, demanding to be let free.

He was laughing before he realised it.

“Oh,” Neil said. His voice had taken on that soft, wondering quality it always did when Andrew surprised him.

Andrew tucked his face against Neil’s shoulder and let the quiet huffs of laughter roll off him, one by one until the urge lessened and his chest felt like his own again.

“Well,” Neil said once he had calmed down. He sounded a little overwhelmed, but his hands were still in Andrew’s hair, grooming him gently. “Well, if that’s the result, I’m going to try my best to woo you with terrible Exy-related metaphors more often.”

Andrew tugged him down into a kiss and took his time in slowly teasing Neil’s self-control apart with his mouth – still so eager for it; after all these years Neil was a junkie when it came to kissing Andrew, and he was never satisfied. Not that Andrew wanted him to ever be.

He felt a huff of breath over his lips and mumbled, “Pipe dream,” before reeling him back in where Neil could prove that every inch of him was, in fact, so very real it made Andrew want to laugh in the face of a universe that had conspired against him from the day he was born.


End file.
